Prof Katy Gardner

This course is available on the BA in Anthropology and Law, BA in Social Anthropology, BSc in Social Anthropology, Erasmus Reciprocal Programme of Study, Exchange Programme for Students from University of California, Berkeley, Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Cape Town), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Fudan) and Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Tokyo). This course is freely available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. It does not require permission. This course is freely available to General Course students. It does not require permission.

Mutually exclusive courses:

This course cannot be taken with AN237 at any time on the same degree programme.

This course explores anthropological perspectives on ‘development’, both in terms of formal schemes of improvement and broader economic transformations and modernisation in the Global South and beyond. Starting with state led schemes in the colonial and post colonial period, we examine the simplifications of development plans and the complexities of bureaucracy and power relations ‘on the ground’. Based around ethnographic case studies, the course provides students with the conceptual tools to understand processes of dispossession and extraction, as well as contemporary neo liberal schemes in which the poor are implored to ‘help themselves’. Topics covered include markets and microcredit, ‘empowerment’, corporate social responsibility and mining, precarity and platform labour and development as ‘anti politics’.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

The contact hours listed above are the minimum expected.

Essay (1500 words).

Students will have the opportunity to submit one formative essay of up to 1500 words during the course.

Students will be informed of their formative submission deadline by email by the end of Week 3 of term.

Gardner and Lewis 2015, Anthropology and Development: Twenty First Century Challenges;

Ferguson, J. 1990 The Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticisation and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho;

Cambridge University Press; Li, T, 2014 Land's End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier;

Karim, L., 2011 Micro-Finance and its Discontents: Women and Debt in Bangladesh; Elyachar, J. 2005;

Markets of Dispossession: NGOs, the Market and the State in Cairo; 

Scherz, C. 2014. Having People, Having Heart: Charity, Sustainable Development, and Problems of Dependence in Central Uganda; Scott; J. 1998, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed.

Detailed reading lists are provided at the beginning of the course.

Essay (100%, 3000 words) in Winter Term Week 1.